Non-Verbal Interaction with Virtual Home Assistants for People with Dysarthria

This article presents a technique for using non-verbal voice cues to improve interaction with virtual home assistants (VHAs) for people with speech impairments. Non-verbal voice cues are any sounds a person produces other than speech, such as, for example, humming. The architecture of this technique also facilitates the minimization of the privacy and security risks associated with recording and monitoring speech directed at VHAs. The user sends non-verbal voice cues to an intermediary control terminal (Raspberry Pi), which then interprets the sound message and passes on a direct programmatic command to the VHA's cloud service to fulfill the request.